When, shortly before 8 a.m. on June 24, 1993, Gelernter opened a book-size package in his office on the fifth floor of Watson Hall, he thought it was a dissertation. It was a nail-laden bomb. Shirtless, bleeding profusely, he ran to a health clinic more than a block away. When he arrived he had no blood pressure.
"A man who has been blown up by a bomb is a mess," Gelernter wrote in his memoir, Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber (Free Press, 1997). During a six-week hospitalization, he endured several operations: reconstructive surgery on his hand, skin grafts on his torso, and, much later, a corneal transplant that restored partial vision in his right eye. His body was devastated—he has described his chest as a "gouged-out construction site"—but his mind was sharp and frantic.
Read the rest of the profile of David Gelernter.[HT: Arts & Letters Daily]
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